Warrington Colescott (brother of painter Robert) was born in Oakland, California, to parents of Creole descent. While studying art at the University of California, Berkeley, he became active with the humor magazine and school newspaper. His background in social satire and cartooning impacted his mature work. In 1949 Warrington Colescott began a thirty-seven-year career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In addition to teaching, he operated Mantegna Press.

Colescott’s complex color etchings became his signature. Moving away from a more abstract style, he embraced the narrative series in the 1960s. In The History of Printmaking Colescott took moments from the lives of the medium’s great innovators and gave them a humorous twist. He’d visited Hayter’s Atelier 17 in 1953, recalling the studio skylights, drawers of prints, and romance of Paris.